Stay on target

In its fourth season, Bojack Horseman grew into something nobody could have seen coming. It started out as a satire of Hollywood and entertainment culture, revolving around a washed-up actor who consistently, almost purposefully screws up everything halfway decent about his life. He instinctively pushes people away. Any conscious efforts to be a better person, or even actively seek out happiness are self-sabotaging. Anyone who sticks with him, either through obligation or because they genuinely like him for some reason, are drawn into Bojack’s cycle of sadness. If they weren’t already wallowing in their own.

When season four begins, the show has already taken this premise to its logical extreme. There’s no clear place to go from the end of season three. The show can’t keep telling the same stories over and over again, nor can it keep relying on the same gags. It had to branch out. It had to experiment. In season four, Bojack Horseman became about so much more than Bojack Horseman. When the show began, we really only focused on other characters as they moved in and out of Bojack’s life. Now, they all have they’re own lives that hardly involve Bojack at all. Part of that is because the characters are all growing apart. Bojack and Princess Carolyn hardly talk to each other all season. Todd has moved out of Bojack’s house and continues to found ridiculous startups. Bojack actively avoids talking to Diane, who’s having her own marital problems with Mr. Peanutbutter. In one episode, Princess Carolyn’s imagined granddaughter justifies her inclusion of Bojack and Diane’s B-plot as fleshing out the world. That’s what the entirety of season four was. By broadening the scope, this fictional version of L.A. was the most fleshed-out, living world it’s ever been.

Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) (via Netflix)

The show now has more confidence in itself than in past seasons. We care about every character, not just how they relate to Bojack. Their storylines don’t have to crossover in every episode. This season, it became the norm for characters to go entire episodes without ever seeing each other. That freed the writers up to focus on the cast as a whole, and really dive into their lives. And it turns out, even without Bojack’s constant presence, they’re lives are pretty sad on their own. More than in any other season, a pervasive atmosphere of sadness and hopelessness hung over the story. Don’t get me wrong; it was still incredibly ridiculous and funny. I cackled out loud even more in this season than in any of the past three. It’s just that, more than almost any other animated comedy, Bojack Horseman cares about the consistency of its world, and refuses to let any of its characters off the hook.

Nothing comes easy for anyone on Bojack Horseman. Even when Princess Carolyn thinks she’s found the perfect guy, complications arise. He’s a mouse, and his family has an entire religious holiday dedicated to how evil cats are. Then, he makes a comment about how easy everything is with her when she’s been working incredibly hard to keep everything together. They try to start a family, and she has a miscarriage. Not her first either, as she reveals. She tells him if he wants easy, he should leave her. And he does.

Mr. Peanutbutter is roped into a campaign for governor that brings both of his ex-wives back into the picture, and puts a serious strain on his relationship with Diane. They go through the worst this season has to offer. At the beginning, they find out they can really only have sex after a heated argument. By the end of it, they’ve bought a house together and tried an impromptu trip to Hawaii (there’s a bridge now) that wasn’t nearly as romantic as either of them hoped. In the final episode, Diane is forced to confront how sad she really is. Their marriage is a hard, messy thing that doesn’t appear to make sense. “But if you squint just right, everything lines up and it’s the most perfect, beautiful, amazing thing.” Then, Diane tells him she’s tired of squinting, and it’s the most brutal, heartbreaking line I’ve ever heard from a wacky animated comedy.

Todd probably has the most traditional sitcom storyline of any of the characters, which is not something I’d ever thought I’d say about a plot involving rabid clown dentists. Everyone else on the show still thinks of Todd as the aimless kid who crashes on Bojack’s house, but that’s not who he is anymore. He’s a (mostly) successful businessman. He has his own place. He’s the one person everything seems to work out for. He got his own episode, which turned out to be one of the best of the season. He frantically juggles responsibilities, including a sham relationship with a movie star, working for Mr. Peanutbutter’s gubernatorial campaign, finding out whether or not the mysterious young horse who showed up is Bojack’s daughter, and playing triangle at the Hollywoo bowl. Along the way, he inadvertently starts a fashion craze that persists through the rest of the season. Todd is the most earnest, hardest-working person on this show, and it starts to pay off this season. One of the most heartening things about his story has been his discovery and acceptance that he’s asexual. Over the course of 12 episodes, we saw him grow more comfortable with using the word to describe himself, find a support group to help him make sense of his feelings, find out that being asexual doesn’t preclude loving, romantic relationships, and possibly find someone who feels the same way that he does. It’s the most positive (if not the only) portrayal of asexuality on TV, and this show handles it with surprising depth and nuance.

Todd (Aaron Paul) and Courtney Portnoy (Sharon Horgan) (Via Netflix)

The season’s biggest surprise though, was saved for Bojack. For once, the show cuts him a break, though he had to go through hell to get it. After losing his on-screen daughter at the end of last season, this one focused on his relationship with two real-life relatives: His mother and his alleged daughter. Needing a break from Hollywoo, he’s entirely absent from the first episode. In the second, he visits his mother’s childhood summer home, and we realize what a terrible childhood she had. Later in the season, we see how she and Bojack’s dad met, married and grew into the people Bojack knew. Yes, they were terrible parents, but the cycle didn’t start with them. When Bojack returns to Hollywoo, he’s confronted with a 17-year-old horse who may be his daughter. She’s smart, self-reliant and genuinely kind, thanks to the great parenting of her eight dads. She still has some of Bojack’s problems. That self-loathing appears to be genetic. In an episode consisting almost entirely of Bojack’s inner monologue telling him he’s a piece of shit, Hollyhock reveals she has that same voice in her head too. (Side note: It’s eerie how will this show captured crippling self-doubt in that one.)

Introducing a possible daughter-figure for Bojack turned out to be a great move. The more Bojack sees himself in her, the more he realizes he doesn’t want her to turn out like him. Her presence actively pushes Bojack to try to be better. That’s something we’ve never seen from him before. It’s not easy for him, either. He screws up, but Hollyhock understands. It helps that she’s not looking for another father and doesn’t expect that from Bojack. All she wants is for him to be a decent human being. She pushes him to bring his mother home. A gesture that backfires horrifically. Ever obsessed with weight, his mother hides diet pills in Hollyhock’s coffee. She grows increasingly unable to process the world around her, doesn’t recognize her body and unknowingly overdoses on amphetamines. As a result, he abandons his mother in a crappy nursing home in Michigan with a view of a dumpster. It’s the worst thing he can do, as she is rapidly spiraling into dementia and barely knows what’s going on around her anymore. Bojack at least performs one last act of mercy for her, if you can call it that. Before leaving her in that room, he gives her a comforting lie about where she is. He tells her she’s at the old summer house eating ice cream. Yes, he’s taking advantage of her illness, but it makes her smile, at least. Plus, after what she did, it’s hard to blame him. Man, even just before the most hopeful ending its ever had, Bojack Horseman is really dark.

Hollyhock (Aparna Nancherla) (Via Netflix)

The series does have a genuinely uplifting ending though. That might actually be a first. Upon finding out who Hollyhock’s mother is, and giving her a phone number, we learn that she wasn’t Bojack’s daughter after all. She’s his half-sister. And her positive influence on Bojack might continue next season. As she says in the finale’s last line, “I’ve never had a brother.” It’s a genuine, heartfelt moment that represents the best of what this series can be. It can be one of the raunchiest, inappropriate and hilarious comedies on TV. It can go to some truly dark and messed up places. But even after all that, it retains its heart. These characters are truly messed up, but the feel like real people. The writers of the show deeply care about them, and as a result, so do we. After the binge is over, it’s sad to see them go. Season four broadened the scope, and made us care about everyone on this show. Now, I can’t wait until we get to see them again next year.